Houston Vampire Session Summary 06/03/2001

    In attendance today are Bruce (Jack Rowell), Chris (the Storyteller), Chuck (Derek Stone), Paul (Allan Macavity), and Tim (Byron Ignatiou).

    When last we played, everyone was hiding in the sewers with Gary, the Nosferatu, just before dawn.

    Everyone is very hungry, accept for Jack, who is hungry and in pain.  Gary is not hungry, but he is impatient for the PCs to go speak with Norman.  The PCs mention their hunger, and Gary allows them an hour and a half to feed.  Derek decides that Byron would be handy to have around, since you can never have too many poets when confronted with the damned, and gives him a call.  He has to do this on a pay phone, as his cell phone is still issuing death threats.  After feeding, the PCs regroup with Gary and go meet with Norman.

    Driving out to meet Norman takes about an hour and a half.  Norman is in a camp site with a number of RVs, a large winnebago, and fifteen to twenty people on foot.  Three people are huddled over a map: Norman, a Ventrue mobster garbed in store-bought wilderness ware, Patrick, a Toreador who accents his store bought wilderness ware with a dramatic goatee, and Jessica, a Gangrel close to ninety years old, with pointy wolf ears, solid black eyes, an elongated face, and short, tough looking fur all over.

    An edgy interrogation ensues, wherein Norman wants to understand what the PCs are doing out in the bone yards, and the PCs want to understand why bone yard cotorie never told anyone about Mystery Death Cavern X.  Things descend into a shouting match, with things settling down into two coherent stories:
    PCs: "We are investigating signs of Sabbat activity, and anything else strange.  We spotted walking dead here, followed up, and found Mystery Death Cavern X.  We investigated.  No, really."
    Norman: "We fight off the Sabbat when we see them.  We found Mystery Death Cavern X before the Sabbat occupation, and no one really knew about it.  We covered it over as best we could, since we couldn't destroy it.  All we could do was hope to contain it and watch it.  We didn't tell anyone because we didn't want to give a bunch of elders an even better excuse to snoop into our business.  We're rather upset that you opened it back up."
    Other notables:

• There are walking dead sometimes associated with MDCX.
• Majid has some activity in the area, and had opened up an arcade once.
• Sometimes Sabbat find MDCX, convert to infernalism, and get waxed by either the Bone Yard Coterie or other Sabbat.
• Covering the hole slowed down the frequency of disappearances.
• There may be more than one entrance, but the Bone Yard Coterie never found any.
• The PCs plan to return and try to destroy MDCX.

    The PCs pile into Jack's Sedan and Byron's truck.  The Bone Yard Coterie piles into a red humvee, with a black and green humvee pulling in behind.  The force stops at a soup kitchen to fill up on blood.  The PCs are armed with a shotgun (Jack), two AK-47s (Derek and Byron), and pistols (Allan).  The Bone Yard Coterie is armed with M-16s (Norman and Patrick) or nothing at all (Gary and Jessica).

    The PCs try to make small talk by asking what the Bone Yarders were up to before this interruption.  Norman explains that they were going to let some witch hunters lose in the forest and then hunt them down for sport.  Jack, alone amongst the PCs, is not weirded out by this.

    The group forms a marching order of Allan and Gary taking obfuscated point, Jessica and Derek taking the front firing positions, Jack and Norman in the middle, and Byron and Patrick in the lead.  Everything is uneventful, though after crossing the retracting bridge, Patrick retracts it.  The PCs react suspiciously, and Patrick explains that any infernalists that might be inside will not be able to escape this way.  The PCs accept this.

    Once in the cavern, everything goes quite nearly to hell.  Norman explains that this is a recruitment drive, and the PCs have the choice of death or damnation, except for Jack.  Gary cheerfully appears and attacks Jack.  Combat ensues, with the following contributions:
 

• Allan spends most of the fight shooting at Patrick.  He destroys Gary's body by throwing it to the fire.
• Byron gets shot, goes into a frenzy, and pummels Norman ineffectually.  When Jessica arrives, he dodges a lot, managing to frustrate both Jessica and Norman, but harming neither of them.  When Norman flees, Byron chases him down and finally kills him, then diablerizes him.
• Derek spends much of the fight defending himself from Jessica, and the latter parts shooting Patrick out of the air, and shooting Norman up pretty bad.
• Gary gets taken out before he can do much damage, staked by Byron and decapitated by Jack's shotgun.
• Jack shoots a lot of rounds, but generally doesn't accomplish much, aside from taking the opportunity to kill Gary.
• Jessica hurts Derek pretty bad before leaving to help Norman with Byron.  No one manages to harm her, but once enough of her allies are dead or fleeing, she turns to mist and dissipates.
• Norman cranks up Majesty, and spends the whole fight shooting at Byron with an assault rifle.  He flees and is diablerized by Byron by the end of the battle.
• Patrick surprises the PCs with a bit of Thaumaturgy, hovering at the roof of the cavern and throwing fire at the PCs, while using a wind shield ritual to protect himself.  Eventually, he takes enough damage to flee.

    What follows then, after Byron is done being in frenzy, is the PCs trying to figure a way out of the cavern.  The only way out is guarded by a small army, and possibly Jessica.  Byron retrieves from grenades from the site of Norman's death, and Derek uses these to blast open some rebar blocking a side passage.  The PCs get through to an open manhole cover, and escape to the streets.

    The streets are patrolled by six vehicles and a bunch of people on foot.  The PCs slip the net with only one brief encounter with a humvee.  The PCs steal a car from a nearby strip club, drive to the next town, scrounge together thirty five cents, and call Harper for help.  Harper sends a van.

    Jeffrey uses a photo album to determine that the PCs fought who they thought they fought.  The explain that powers the surviving vampires displayed (Jessica showed full mastery of Protean and Fortitude, and moved four times as fast as a normal person.  Patrick showed three or four levels each of Lure of the Flames and Movement of the Mind), and describe MDCX.  However, there is no legal action that can be taken - the traditions do not forbid infernalism, and the Bone Yarders could argue they attacked only in defense of their domain.  The Bone Yarders have the advantage of age, so they would likely win any arguments before the Prince.

    Allan takes a blood sample to Malcolm, who cannot determine the source of the blood.  It isn't human, or from any known supernaturals either.  He surmises that it is magically manufactured, and probably only used as a food source.

    Derek attends a Ventrue board meeting, and is relieved that no one mentions anything about the Bone Yards fight.  After the meeting, Derek pulls Dmitri aside, as the contract on Susan is troubling him.  This is because she is only a lap dog, and he feels almost like it is demeaning to go after her.  Dmitri is bothered by Derek's hesitance, and asks if this is a sudden case of scruples, which Derek declines.  Dmitri questions Derek's abilities as a remorseless killer, and Derek is shamed into saying that Susan will be dead within a week.

    Derek acquires an incendiary bomb and a mind-controlled car thief.  Derek waits at the welcoming party for Luciana, and tails Susan once she gets sent on a humiliating errand.  Susan stops at a dry cleaners and enters the building.  Derek sends his car thief forward to plant the bomb in her car.  Susan walks back to her car, but her danger sense goes off, and she flees the scene.  Derek blows up her car anyway, but this fails to send her into Rotschrek.  Susan calls for help on her cell phone, and another car eventually shows up to take her away.  Derek has his car thief stake out the party, but the car thief doesn't see anything further.

    Byron can't remember how long its supposed to take for his aura to look right, so he decided to lay low for a year and a half and only talk to the other PCs.  When other Vampires ask why he won't come out anymore, he explains that he thinks he finally got someone mad enough that attempts are being made on his life, so he's keeping a low profile.  Most everyone accepts this story at face value.

The session ends with everyone earning 4 experience.  This brings the campaign total to 54.